Even Republicans Hate Trump’s Brutal Budget Plan

Less than 24 hours after a federal judge in Hawaii blocked Donald Trump’s revised executive order on immigration and at a time when the G.O.P.’s health-care bill is on life support, the White House was dealt another setback Thursday when even hardline and hawkish Republicans on Capitol Hill came out in opposition to the president’s draconian budget proposal. With Congress in control of the purse strings, much of Trump’s “America First” budget could be dead on arrival—draining more political capital from an administration that is already running on fumes.

The criticisms lobbed at the president’s budget were wide ranging, with lawmakers from rural states recoiling at Trump’s drastic cuts to critical domestic programs even as some G.O.P. hawks argued that the proposed defense and military spending increases aren’t enough. But all agreed that the budget put forward by the president would not pass the House or Senate in its current form. “We’re going to have to find a different way to balance the budget,” Raúl R. Labrador, a G.O.P. congressman from Idaho, told reporters on Thursday, arguing that “the left is not going to let [Trump] decrease nondefense discretionary to the extent that he wants to.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan suggested that there are many revisions to come and said there will be a full hearing on the budget. “But, do I think we can cut spending and get waste out of government? Absolutely,” Ryan said. “Where and how and what numbers, that’s something we’ll be figuring out as time goes on.”

White House budget proposals usually act as a wish list, outlining the administration’s agenda and pushing Congress in its direction. As Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley pointed out to the Post, “I have never seen a president’s budget proposal not revised substantially.” Still, the backlash to Trump’s proposal from members of his own party has been notable, given how it contradicts the populist themes he sounded on the campaign trail. In a statement, Republican Rep. Hal Rogers, the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was “disappointed” with the “draconian, careless and counterproductive” funding cuts, adding, “We will certainly review this budget proposal, but Congress ultimately has the power of the purse.”

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, for one, said there was no contradiction between the White House budget and Trump’s campaign promises. On the contrary, Mulvaney explained, “We went to what the president said during the campaign and we turned those policies into numbers.” But Republicans, particularly in vulnerable districts, remain unassured. Steve Bell, a longtime budget aide who now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center, toldThe Wall Street Journal that Trump’s budget has no shot at surviving Congress. “It is a budget that is more for messaging and public relation purposes for the Republican base than it is as a serious effort,” Bell said, adding that the budget cuts “hit places that even many Republicans think is inappropriate.”

Many Republicans have expressed concerns about the proposed 28 percent cut to the State Department budget, much of which is focused on foreign aid. Senator Lindsey Grahamsaid the plan will be “dead on arrival” as a result of the massive reduction to the agency. Rogers echoed his concern. “As General [James] Mattis said prophetically, slashing the diplomatic efforts will cause them to have to buy more ammunition,” the congressman said, in reference to the Secretary of Defense. “There is two sides to fighting the problem that we’re in: There is military and then there’s diplomatic. And we can’t afford to dismantle the diplomatic half of that equation.”

Even Trump’s proposed $2.6 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, which would has long been in the G.O.P.’s crosshairs, has prompted concerns from lawmakers whose states or districts would be directly impacted. Senator Rob Portman has objected to slashing funding for the $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. “I’m committed to continuing to do everything I can to protect and preserve Lake Erie, including preserving this critical program and its funding,” the Ohio senator said in a statement. The proposed cuts to the Department of Agriculture have prompted similar opposition.

As with the House Republican health-care bill, Trump’s budget plan would disproportionately hurt many of the older, rural Americans who came out in droves to support his presidential bill—a point Senator Joe Manchinraised Wednesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Those people don’t know how they got these services,” Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, said he told President Trump during a conversation about health-care reform. “They didn’t know it was the Democrats. They didn’t know it was President Obama. They had no idea. But let me tell you, Mr. President, they’re going to know who took it away from them. They will know if they lose it.”

Republicans fear that the same could be true for the budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration. The full elimination of funding for a number of programs that seek to aid the working class—such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Community Development Block Grant program, which is used to provide funding for programs like Meals on Wheels in some states—could have a detrimental impact on the very people who got Trump elected, particularly voters in Appalachia where Trump won 66 percent of the vote. “Everybody thinks that’s going to Detroit and Cleveland, but the fact of the matter is there are a lot of cities in Appalachia and elsewhere that really need community development block grants,” Bell told the Journal.

There is, of course, another faction of the G.O.P. arguing that Trump’s proposed 10 percent increase in military spending is not enough. According to the Post, Senator John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, are pushing for a $640 billion defense budget, well over the $603 billion allocation in Trump’s budget. “The Administration’s budget request is not enough to repair that damage and to rebuild the military as the president has discussed,” Thornberry said in a statement. “It is morally wrong to task someone with a mission for which they are not fully prepared and fully supported with the best weapons and equipment this nation can provide.”